


god, i'm tired

by dragulamutual



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, just gals being pals: this time with sharp weapons and the intent to kill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:08:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24065581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragulamutual/pseuds/dragulamutual
Summary: the first mistake villanelle made was getting attached.a slight re-imagining of the s1 finale.
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Kudos: 21





	god, i'm tired

The first mistake Villanelle made was getting attached.

Yeah, that sounds about right. It’s what they all want to think - it’s believable, it’d work as an excuse if they found out, which was inevitable at this point.  _ I’m sorry _ , she’d say, _ I should have known better _ .  _ We told you _ , Konstantin would reply, _ not to get invested, but you did, and look where you are now.  _ And she’d nod, fake a few tears, apologise, give them what they wanted to see. It wouldn’t be difficult, nothing she hadn’t done before. 

‘Are you gonna kill me?’ Eve asks, and Villanelle can’t tell whether or not she’s being serious. Surely,  _ surely _ , she knows they’re past that. She shakes her head in response, smiles drily, drops the pistol she’s holding onto the floor.

(Maybe  _ that _ was her first mistake, in hindsight. Rookie move.)

‘Promise?’ Eve whispers, holds out a hand as if a childish linking of their fingers will confirm it - it does - and then collapses back onto the bed, seemingly satisfied. Her hair falls around her and frames her face like a halo, soft and cloud-like, strikingly dark in contrast to the white sheets. Villanelle turns and pushes herself up onto one elbow, pushing a single dark strand out of Eve's face. She smiles, and for the first time in weeks it’s not for show.

‘Would you stay for a bit?’ she whispers, hope clear in her eyes, though she’d never admit it. Eve grins, turns to face her, meets her gaze. ‘Sure,’ she smiles, obviously uneasy.

They’re silent for a few seconds, neither wanting to be the one to break eye contact, when Villanelle leans closer, places a soft hand on Eve's cheek. ‘I’ve never done anything like this before,’ Eve murmurs, glancing sideways, and blushes like a schoolgirl. Villanelle’s eyes soften. ‘It’s ok,’ she replies, ‘I know what I’m doing.’ She leans in (second mistake, if she’s counting), closes her eyes, and only then does she feel the sharp metal press into her stomach.

Well,  _ fuck _ .  _ So the tables have turned, _ she thinks, and laughs, harsh, eyes jolting open. ‘Wow,’ she exhales, eyes narrowing. ‘That’s rude.’

‘Yeah,’ Eve responds, visibly nervous. Her hands are shaking, Villanelle can feel it. Cute.

‘You can’t,’ she laughs, glancing down. ‘You won’t.’

‘I will,’ is the reply, but Eve's voice is small, unsteady, unsure.

‘No, you won’t,’ Villanelle grabs the knife and pulls it upwards, unfolding Eve's fingers one by one from around the handle. ‘and you  _ can’t. _ You don’t have it in you.’

‘I do-’

‘You want to kill me?’ Villanelle replies, running a finger over the blade, studying it carefully. ‘With this?  _ Ouch. _ ’ She meets Eve's gaze, raises an eyebrow. ‘You couldn’t do better?’

‘I- I don’t know? I didn’t think-’

‘Come on, a _ knife _ ? You’re so boring.’ She rolls her eyes in disapproval. 

‘Sorry, what would you have preferred?’ Eve sighs, defeated. ‘A hairpin syringe? Explosives in your drink? I’m not the fucking professional here.’

‘I’m insulted,’ Villanelle groans, turning the handle over in her hands. ‘You think I’d kill  _ you  _ like this?’

‘You wouldn’t,’ Eve spits back. ‘You wouldn’t hurt me at all.’

Villanelle raises an eyebrow, waits for the punchline as Eve huffs, anxious, and stares at the ceiling as if she’s waiting for an escape route to materialise. She laughs out loud when she realises there’s no humour in Eve's words, lays back down, and exhales sharply. 

‘Eve,’ she starts, audibly amused, ‘do you want to know what I did yesterday?’ Eve tilts her head, confused, but doesn’t reply. Fine, Villanelle thinks, don’t play along. Let her be stubborn, see where acting like a bratty child will get her. She lays the knife down beside Eve's other arm and exhales.

‘I went on a nice little drive, and I ended up at Konstantin’s house, you remember him?’ - Eve nods - ‘and I walked through his garden, with all the flowers, and I thought,  _ god _ , he’s like a  _ father  _ to me, you know? I threw him a  _ birthday party _ .’ she smiles sweetly, pushes herself up on both elbows, leans over Eve. ‘And I spent a long time in his house, waiting for him to come home. He spent a while with your friend, Carolyn. And then he came home, and I pulled out my gun, and I shot at him, like _ , ten times _ , Eve, but he got away.’ She pouts, laughing. ‘And I have known him far, far longer than I have known you, baby, and that was nothing to me.’

Eve smiles, and for once, Villanelle can’t tell whether her methods worked - she doesn’t seem unsettled. ‘But you promised, remember?’

‘Ah, yeah, I did,’ Villanelle replies, reaching over her and grabbing the knife. She drags it back by the handle, lets it linger longer than necessary for effect. Eve’s breath hitches, and Villanelle chuckles to herself. Nothing will happen - nothing can, at least from this angle - but it won’t hurt her to be scared. ‘Hey, we’ll play a game, since I promised. Make it fun. I’ll close my eyes, and you can have ten seconds to hide, and then we’ll see how good I am at keeping promises.’

She starts to count down, buries her head in a pillow for emphasis, and smiles to herself, caught up in the childish exhilaration of the makeshift morbid game of hide-and-seek. She’s sure, deep down, that Eve knows she’d never do anything to harm her. God, how could she? The fun was in the chase; the tension, days spent in the dark, letters passed through criminal middlemen, exaggerated clues placed at crime scenes. The fun was in the tension, in the fact that  _ nothing happened, _ and nothing would, for a while, if ever. She could live with that. She knew Eve would still be there when she opened her eyes, and their game would continue.

She lets herself think, for the last seven seconds or so, about what would happen if they were leading different lives entirely, and what could have been. A whirlwind romance between… a teacher, she’d like to be a teacher, and eve would be a chef, maybe, or a barista, or something else so blissfully mundane. She allows herself to get caught up in this rose-tinted, seven-second reality. Surely, it’s not just her. She was great at picking up social cues, she had to be. This couldn’t be a one-sided thing. This was more. This _ had to be more. _

Villanelle reaches zero, opens her eyes, and it takes her a frankly embarrassingly long amount of time to snap herself out of the ideal before she realises Eve has taken her keys and walked straight out of the apartment, leaving only dust in her wake.

**Author's Note:**

> and two years later i finally remember this exists and decide to post it  
> season three, huh? that's happening! that sure is a thing that is going on!  
> i'm on tumblr @meegis. come and talk to me about buses and the metaphorical significance of build-a-bear workshop.


End file.
